


we forget to feed our fear

by openmouthwideeye



Series: The Imp's Wife [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angstfest, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 17:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The minstrels might sing of hope grasped in the most desperate of places. Brienne only knew of the love she found beneath the shadow of a dragon's wing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we forget to feed our fear

**Author's Note:**

> I can't with the angst. It's like the sweetest torture to write.
> 
> My deepest apologies.

The first time Brienne saw a dragon, she was tromping through heavy snow beside the Lady Sansa. The girl had grown melancholy of late, shut up in caves and clefts while the winds whipped and blizzards swirled outside their makeshift camps.  
  
 _That’s no great wonder,_  Brienne thought, looking over as Sansa picked her practiced way around hidden pits and slick patches of ice.  _After her imprisonment in the Vale, the safety of our caves must seem another cell._  
  
It seemed so to Brienne, though the caves were shallow, barely recessed enough to conceal them, let alone to lose her way. At night their little fires flickered red and orange, licking the walls and turning the ceiling black. Brienne imagined it was the fury of the red god bearing down on her. She cried out in her sleep, wrenched herself awake with her screams, and lay panting on the hard, cold stone. Sansa and Ser Hyle pretended not to notice. Brienne wished Jaime would pretend, too.  
  
A shadow passed overhead, turning the air around them more bitterly cold than Brienne thought possible. She glanced up, expecting to see some cloud blotting the sun, but there was only a distant outline, a ragged bird sweeping the skies.  
  
“Is there something wrong?” Sansa asked, glancing upward.  
  
 _I’ve never seen a bird cast a shadow so vast._  
  
Brienne did not wish to frighten her for naught.  
  
“Just a bird,” she said, turning back toward their cave. “Come, the sun is waning, and we must depart before dawn.”  
  
She mentioned her unease to Jaime and Ser Hyle, once Sansa had retired to her bedroll.  
  
“Jumping at tricks of the light?” a mocking smile rested easy across Ser Hyle’s lips. “I would not have thought you craven, my lady.”  
  
Brienne set her jaw, refusing to be offended.  
  
Jaime frowned.  
  
“Come, Lady Brienne,” Hyle patched his jape, “We shall scour the mountain until we find the cause of your shadow.”  
  
“There is no need,” she protested. “It was only a carrion-eater.”  
  
She went with him all the same.  
  
They found nothing that night, nor many nights after, though Hyle jokingly insisted their sentries watch the skies, and Jaime tersely agreed.  
  
It was he who first recognized the truth of the matter. Brienne had seen the vast shadow thrice; Jaime need only see it once.  
  
“Tyrion spent half his childhood scouring books for the mention of dragons,” he said grimly. “None of the stories were pleasant, and I suspect the realities are less so.”  
  
Ser Hyle suggested keeping Lady Sansa ignorant for the nonce, but Brienne would not have it.  
  
“She must know,” Brienne set her jaw. “She must be able to defend herself.”  
  
Hyle tried to argue, but Jaime overrode his objections.  
  
“A fine end to our quest if our lady wanders off to relieve herself and finds herself meal to a flying beast.”  
  
They kept watch in pairs of twos, Brienne guarding Sansa while Jaime and Hyle watched each other. Brienne and Sansa grew to know one another. By the second week of their journey, Brienne had stopped seeing Lady Catelyn shining behind her eyes.  
  
They traveled in daylight, unconcerned with concealment. With the sun obscured with clouds and snow, they could hardly see their own ice-crusted boots. But there was always the threat of some creature lurking above, and they would have no warning should they travel at night.  
  
“They are scouting,” Jaime noted one afternoon, when the shadows had passed and the sky shone hazy white light on their little party.  
  
Ser Hyle blinked in surprise, and the Lady Sansa flinched before smoothing her features.  
  
Brienne had already reached the same conclusion.  
  
“They never stay but a quarter hour,” Jaime explained. “They fly low, and there is no prey here.”  
  
 _No prey here but us._  
  
It was an unwelcome thought, but one that felt inevitable. She had been running from one foe or another since Riverrun.  
  
 _Would that we could rest awhile._  
  
***  
  
The moment Brienne realized Jaime loved her, they were hunkering behind a stripped and scraggly sapling that would not outlast the winter. They had gone in search of sustenance, a fruitless venture with the scarcity of game. Brush, they learned, was scarcer still.  
  
A dragon circled overhead, the lazy flap of its wings blowing stinging sheets of snow into the exposed skin of their faces. All that obscured them from view was a shallow outcropping of rock and the layers of snow clinging to their clothing.  
  
Brienne’s heart was pounding, pulsing; she wanted to still it so the beast would not hear. Her legs ached from crouching, her back bent under the weight of her cold-crusted cloaks. Her thick, fur lined glove was held securely in Jaime’s. She could barely feel the pressure through the numbness of her fingers.  
  
None of their party had fallen to the harbingers of Aerys’ revenge. They had been meticulous, or wary, or blessed by the gods, and the fire-mongers had not sensed them.   
  
Until now.   
  
Brienne could only grit her teeth and breathe thanks that Sansa was wrapped safe in their cave, unaware and content as any of them could be.  
  
The dragon whirled, hunting, unable to pinpoint the violent movement that had caught its attention.  
  
Jaime had noted the transparency of Ser Hyle’s overtures, and implied that Brienne might soon find herself with a septon or a scandal at her doorstep. Brienne should not have struck him, no matter the provocation.  
  
She did not know how long they crouched there, trapped and tense, before Jaime tugged her close, pressing as tightly as the snow and cloth and sharp, clinging snaps of ice would allow.   
  
She did not mind. Her ire had faded with dimming of the sun.  
  
 _A smaller target,_  she recognized, through a haze of concentration and fear.  
  
He made them smaller still, bending his head and pressing his lips to hers until they met on every plane, like one great, hulking snow-beast finding comfort beneath the rocks.  
  
Brienne’s breath turned erratic, her tension melding into a new kind of fear, a nerve-tingling sensation that made her want to shove him from her.  
  
 _It will hear._  She clung to the thought, desperate.  
  
Jaime swallowed her chapped lips as though she’d spoken aloud, and Brienne could not hold her objections.  
  
Fear dissipated, oozed from her like sweat. Brienne felt a hundred half-forgotten moments in the harsh scrape of his beard on her raw face: a cup of hot water that did not warm so well as the hands that bore it; a sentence left unfinished, its words unnecessary; the nights Brienne lay flush against Jaime’s back, feeling him breathe as he slept and she dreamed.   
  
They did not break. Did not speak. Brienne felt she could barely inhale, though the bitter air grew moist and heady around them. Beneath the shadow of the dragon’s wings Jaime muffled her sounds as she muffled his, and Brienne learned a new way to go away inside.   
  
They stay crouched together long after the muted sound of the beast’s wings moved south. Two souls bound together, exploring the world’s possibilities. Two broken knights conquering fear.  
  
Lady Sansa knew the truth before they shook the snow off their cloaks, and Ser Hyle the moment Brienne stepped toward the glow of the fire.  
  
 _Unless I found some bear to maul me in the snow, there is nothing to hide what has happened._  
  
Her lips were chapped worse than before, bleeding and stripped in ways they had not been. Jaime’s had fared no better, though he carried it better than she.  
  
“I am glad for you,” Sansa whispered that eve, threading warm fingers through Brienne’s as they huddled by the fire. “You deserve all the wonders of the songs.”  
  
She sounded sad as she said it, which suited Brienne well enough.  
  
 _How can I feel joy, when there is another thing the gods might wrest from me?_  
  
The minstrels might have sung ballads, spinning words of beauty and love grasped in the most desperate of places. Brienne thumbed the hard, dead skin peeling from her lips, and lullabies and dirges were one, spinning melodies in her head.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you kindly for that feedback you're going to leave me. ;D


End file.
